Wireless or mobile service providers, such as cell phone service providers, often make certain content available to the devices that access the provider's network. For instance, the user of a mobile phone may be able to access certain mobile webpages (e.g., written in or transcoded to wireless markup language (WML)) that are provided by the provider through the provider's mobile portal. The content provided may include, for example, games, catalog pages, video clips, sports scores, internet email, uploaded and downloaded photos, music downloads, graphics such as area maps, news stories, weather reports, and stock market information.
Content available through the mobile portal can be referred to as “on-deck” content, whereas “off-deck” content may refer to content that is available on the Internet generally. In general, the on-deck content varies from provider to provider. Some devices may only be able to access the on-deck content, while others may be able to access the on-deck and off-deck content.
The on-deck or off-deck content, or the formatting of the on-deck or off-deck content, may be adjusted to the make and model of the device used to access the content. For example, a given on-deck or off-deck webpage or other content may be modified based on the bandwidth of the particular device's connection, screen size limitations of the particular device, and/or graphical user interface (GUI) input capabilities of the particular device.
Also, wireless service providers or other content providers may also modify a webpage or other content to allow their users to use newer capabilities of newer wireless devices, while insuring that the content is suitable to older wireless devices. Desktop browsers may use the full display, memory, processing and input capabilities of a desktop computer, which can allow such browsers to easily process large and complicated file formats. On the other hand, some wireless browsers may have limitations in some or all of these capabilities. Over time, however, the browsers on wireless devices may increase in capabilities, and the wireless service providers may want to insure that the content is readily available for newer wireless browsers as well as older ones.
To accommodate such differences, a wireless service provider or other content provider may store multiple versions of a given webpage, with each version being designed for one or more particular devices. When a device requests the webpage, the appropriate version for that device is identified and returned to the device. Alternatively, or additionally, the wireless service provider or other content provider may store one version of the content, and then transcode or otherwise transform that version to a version for the particular device requesting the content before sending the requested content to the device.